I find this illogical and scary:
'Tesla stock is now worth more than the combined valuations of General Motors, Ford, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Toyota. Yet, Tesla makes just a fraction of the cars of its more established rivals.'
The stock is gonna crash so hard in a couple of years, I am sure someone will make a movie out of it. I might actually buy a good bunch of options against Tesla, if they reach far enough into the future.
The fact that they have a huge fleet of cars with cameras and sensors on the road feeding their ML models is a huge advantage.
Battery factories.
Supercharger network.
Elon's Following.
Edit: added following
Tesla has atleast a 3 year advantage, a very strong hold on battery production, extreme brand loyalty, and an iteration cycle that puts all other car companies to shame. They’ve caught an entire industry with their pants down.
Try to buy a Lexus, BMW, MB, etc and you get a huge laundry list of incompatible features that bundle in the options you want into expensive bundles. So much so that to get even the basic safety things like rear view cameras and decent headlights laws had to be passed and companies embarrassed with poor safety ratings because their headlights were unsafe at highway speeds and much worse than a Toyota Prius unless you bought the many $k package with the fancy headlights.
Want a reliable car that's likely to last a few 100k miles, 353 mile range, is one of the safest cars on the planet to drive, has a great charging networks, great headlights, generous interior room, and low cost per mile? Get a model 3 AWD for $48k, it's a hell of a deal, and that's assuming your state, city, and country have no incentives. Sure it's one of the "slow" Tesla's at 0-60 in 4.2 seconds, but still one of the quicker accelerating cars around.
I'd be hard pressed to name a #2. There's a nice Porsche, but it's like twice as much. The ford Mach e is somewhat similar, less range, less accel (at the same price), not as safe, and nowhere close on the charging network.
Chevy bolt is embarrassing in comparison, doesn't handle, doesn't accelerate, not as safe, nowhere close on range, not AWD, etc.
Yours is the same logic that has been deployed against tech industry P/E ratios for decades. No, it doesn't make "sense" per the balance sheet. But it's clear what the bet is.
But with Tesla, the bet is that in 30 years that company is going to own most of the market all these existing firms do. That may be wrong, but like I said it's clear that this is the bet.
Tesla is being valued based on its potential future, not present.
I still feel that Tesla is overvalued, but there exists a potential future where it still has room to grow (I'm not sure I'd like that future - so this, coupled with the stock volatility, kept me from investing in Tesla. Which, TBH, was a poor decision so far :D )
This is what I don't get. Tesla's potential (but unlikely) future is that of replacing some of its competitors. And yet it's valued more than all its current competitors combined. Something just doesn't add up.
The goal of self driving for a company like Tesla should be to replace Uber, the logistics industry and legacy automakers.
Excusez le mot, but I really do see these developments as two sides of the same coin.
Tesla's controlling interest at least wants Tesla to succeed, the people that hijacked the Bitcoin GitHub repo specifically want it to fail as, "Digital Peer-to-Peer Cash".
Just look into nonsense like "Replace by Fee", Greg Maxwell and the company Blockstream itself. All social engineering to get Bitcoin to fail.